TL;DR:
- WLFI presented at Token2049 Singapore its plan to integrate payments with the USD1 stablecoin across major online business platforms.
- Mesh announced a partnership with World Liberty Financial to allow USD1 holders to use the stablecoin across its merchant network this quarter.
- The OCC conditionally approved a national trust bank for WLFI, which would allow it to directly assume the issuance of USD1, currently handled by BitGo.
During a panel on stablecoins at the Token2049 Singapore conference, executives from World Liberty Financial (WLFI) presented their plans to expand payments with USD1 to some of the largest online businesses in the market.
The firm’s co-founder, Zak Folkman, and CEO Zach Witkoff, shared the stage with Bam Azizi, co-founder and CEO of Mesh, who announced a partnership with WLFI to integrate USD1 into the merchant network of its payments infrastructure. The rollout is scheduled for the current quarter.
“Beyond the use of the World Liberty app itself, we are already in plans to deploy this same technology across some of the largest Web2 businesses in the market,” Folkman stated during the session.
The USD1 stablecoin is designed to maintain a $1 peg and is currently issued by BitGo. Its reserves are composed of cash, U.S. government money market funds and cash equivalents. At the time of the conference, its market capitalization stood at around $4.45 billion, according to CoinGecko.
WLFI Seeks to Take Over USD1 Issuance
In August, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) granted a conditional approval for WLFI to establish a national trust bank authorized to issue dollar-backed stablecoins and custody digital assets. According to Witkoff, this license would allow the company to directly assume the issuance of USD1. “Today we issue through BitGo,” he noted. “With this trust charter, we will be able to take on that responsibility ourselves.”
The approval drew criticism from Senator Elizabeth Warren, who pointed to conflicts of interest tied to the Trump family’s ties to WLFI. Warren and other senators pushed the legislation known as the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act in response to the situation.
The OCC responded that its leadership and staff acted consistently with their statutory and ethical obligations when evaluating the application. At the panel, Witkoff stated that the approval is an achievement obtained “despite some of the attacks against us,” referring to criticism from media outlets and political figures.
